The morning sun should have felt ordinary—warm, soft, comforting—but Arav woke to a world that hummed as if remembering a song it had not finished. He sat up, fingers curled, and felt the aether thrumming at the edges of his awareness. It was the kind of not-quite-pain that made his stomach feel hollow; the rest of him wanted to be a child and the part that had learned too quickly wanted to be careful.
He breathed the way Aaryan had taught him: slow, even, a thread of warmth guiding in then settling into the chest. A small spark of flame flickered on his palm like a living thing and died when he blinked. The sensation of seeing too much—of aether threads overlaying the courtyard, of edges blurring in a film of light—came on suddenly. For a breath it was wide and bright and hungry, and then the sight tightened into a single ribbon of light he could hold in his mind.
That sudden widening left a taste in the back of his throat: cold rain, a cut, a hand that wasn't his. For a second he was elsewhere—thin and very small and very afraid. He gripped the stone bench to steady himself and felt Isha climb into his lap as if she could anchor him with limbs and nonsense.
"Arav?" Sharanya was at his side, voice immediate and sharp. Aaryan's hand lighted his shoulder; not to scold but to steady.
"Breathe," Aaryan said. "Slow."
He did. The world folded back. The threads eased. The tiny ache in his chest softened into a dull throb.
Aaryan's face, usually unreadable, held something like old sorrow threaded with will. He looked toward the western walls where the city's outer courtyards met the Ashvathar estate and did not need to say the thought: people were waiting. They always were when something large stirred.
Arav tried again, careful. This time the flame on his palm behaved; it held, not wild, not timid. He let out the breath he'd been keeping and felt a small pride that was half relief. Isha clapped, delighted. "Bhaiya tamed the bird!"
Sharanya's smile was softer, but it didn't reach the worry in her eyes. The household moved with a shape he could feel: servants who spoke in clipped tones, guards who walked their rounds with older men's eyes, children who pretended nothing had changed though they listened at doors. The estate kept its calm like a practiced face; beneath it, a current of something waiting hummed.
Aaryan called them together after midday. He did not raise his voice—he never needed to—but his plans were exact and utilitarian.
"Reinforce the outer formations," he instructed. "Double the patrol at night. No one leaves alone during the dusk period. Make the practice room flameproof tonight."
Sharanya added small practicalities: stores of mud and water near training grounds, extra trained hands in the kitchens, and a soft cordon around the courtyard for the next few days. Isha cheered as if they were building a fort for dragons. Arav watched and felt protected and oddly exposed at the same time; to have so many nets around him meant he was something to trap, or something worth guarding.
He tried the aether-sight again, briefly. Threads unfurled—thin, bright, too numerous—and the world threatened to swell with information until his limbs felt too small to carry it. The edges of vision frayed. He tasted the memory of cold and rain again and had to press his palm to his mouth to stop a sound that might have been a cry. Aaryan's hand tightened on his shoulder and he felt steadied by force rather than words.
Later, while servants rearranged training dummies and the wind pushed loose leaves across the courtyard, a soft chime sounded inside his head—the system alert he had learned to expect.
[Warning: External resonance persists.]
[Unknown entity continues to synchronize with host's awakening wavelength.]
[Advisory: Maintain concealment protocols.]
The message was plain and businesslike. Still, it landed with the weight of a bell. Arav's stomach lurched. He pictured what the words implied: another child somewhere out in the wide world whose pulse matched his, a distant echo that could be friend or rival. The thought filled him with a small iron—he did not like being matched, being measured. He clutched Aaryan's hand until his knuckles whitened.
The estate's whispering mechanisms worked: rumors passed by couriers, careful scouts relayed humidity and aether blips, and the Council—distant, patient—watched through instruments sharper than eyes. They had been turned away from direct inspection once; they did not press that day. Instead they recorded, they waited, they passed notes. Power, the watchers knew, could be both a weapon and a wound. Better to catalog than to pry.
Arav felt the weight of being cataloged without wanting to be anything but a child who could run and fall and be forgiven for messy sleeves. He imagined, ridiculous and sharp, his life as a small flame under glass. He wanted to be loud and stubby and burned-toast messy, not a map.
That night Aaryan ordered the practice room to be reinforced. Craftsmen—silent and efficient—moved stone and sealed lines of warding with sigils that hummed faintly when the moon lifted. Sharanya oversaw supplies and made arrangements so that the walls would keep them safe without turning their home into a fortress of strangers.
When the caretakers left, the world felt smaller and safer, but no less charged. Aaryan sat beside Arav for a while after Isha fell asleep, and for once the mountain of a man came down to a level where only two people existed: father and son.
"You did well today," Aaryan said, voice low.
Arav swallowed. "I don't want to hurt anyone."
"You won't," Aaryan said. "But you must learn to carry the ripple you make. We will practice, slow."
Arav listened. The promise steadied something inside him.
— POV: Elder Varun —
Varun watched the overflow of data on his projection—last night's spike, a string of minor after-resonances, a dampening signature that suggested local masking. He did not move to act; he cataloged. The Council had been refused direct entry once; that refusal stood. For now, observation was the safest tool. Trade routes would be watched for rumors, scouts were to be positioned at frayed borders, and the pattern noted: a child's aether that behaved like a veteran's in timestamps but like a beginner's in control. Varun filed the anomaly under: keep under watch, do not provoke.
— POV: Unknown Thunder Child —
A small flash of lightning danced at the tips of the boy's fingers. He stared at the night sky for a while, feeling an echo he could not name—the warm burn of someone else's rise. It made his chest twitch with something like decision. He tapped the windowpane once and said, very quietly, "We will meet." The sound of the vow felt like a click in his mouth.
Arav lay that night under a cover and tried to think of small things: the taste of honeyed porridge, Isha's earnest face while she hammered at a toy drum, the smell of wet earth after rain. He repeated the breathing Aaryan had taught him until his thoughts blurred into the rhythm. The threads in his head were quieter. For now, the aether felt like company rather than a storm. He held the image of small and good things tight, a shield against the idea that he was notable in a way that would make people take him like an artifact.
Outside the estate, instruments recorded numbers, scribes typed notes, and whispers planned contingencies that had little to do with the child's wishes and everything to do with politics and advantage. Inside, a father and mother set out nets to hold the small, dangerous thing they loved. Somewhere, a boy with thunder in his chest promised himself a meeting he did not yet understand.
Arav breathed, and the flame in his palm did not surge. For the first time in days it simply warmed his hand. He smiled with the private, stubborn pride of a child who had done something right.
The ripple thinned, for now. The threads refused to go entirely quiet. They would not be quiet for a while. But within the walls he knew—at least for tonight—there was shelter.